The Itsy Bitsy Spider
by tinyrose65
Summary: A domestic disturbance sends Officer Castiel and his partner Hannah off to investigate. The explanation they get isn't quite what they were expecting (AU! All Human! Destiel).


**Title:** The Itsy Bitsy Spider

 **Author:** Tinyrose65

 **Summary:** A domestic disturbance sends Officer Castiel and his partner Hannah off to investigate. The explanation they get isn't quite what they were expecting (AU! All Human! Destiel).

 **Note:** Based on a tumblr post.

* * *

So far, Castiel's day had not been a good one. It was a Monday, to start with, which was horrible for the normal reasons. But Mondays were also their slowest days at the precinct, which meant Cas spent most of his day at his desk filing out paperwork. He supposed he should've been grateful for the fact— less crime and all— but he was, quite frankly, bored. In fact, it wasn't until close to the very end of his shift that he got to do anything at all. They got a call about a domestic disturbance a few blocks over, and Cas and his partner Hannah had been the ones chosen to go.

Donna, who was working the phones that night, reported, "Neighbors heard a man screaming that he was going to kill somebody, followed by some loud noises and a woman screaming."

"Cas and I will go," Hannah volunteered, clearly as eager as Cas was to get out of the office.

"What do you think we'll find?" he asked her as they headed outside to the car. Hannah shrugged, clearly not wanting to speculate.

"Hopefully not much," she said, entering the passenger side, Cas in the driver's seat. He had to agree with her on that . Domestic disturbance calls had the potential to be quite grizzly, as did most things in their line of work. Still, some of the worst nights Cas had ever had as a cop involved domestic disturbances. He didn't want a repeat of one of those.

The rest of the car ride was filled with silence, just the occasional chatter from the dispatcher over the radio. When they reached the address, Cas was not surprised to see that the house looked completely normal from the outside. In a decent neighborhood, there was nothing to suggest foul play, but there rarely was in cases like this.

As he and Hannah exited the car, Cas noted that several neighbors were peeking through drawn curtains in their windows. Cas nudged Hannah and nodded in their direction. She nodded back to show that she had seen them, then, together, they approached the house.

There was no noise coming from the house as far as Cas could hear. All the lights were on, some of the windows open. He could see movement through one of them, but nothing definitive. Hannah, looking in the same direction, shrugged at him, clearly not sure what they'd find.

Cas knocked.

There were a few muffled curses and the sound of some furniture falling over, and then the door opened and—

 _Well._

Cas had always been the consummate professional when it came to work. When he had first started out, he might've even been _too_ professional, not offering victims much comfort with his cool demeanor and general awkwardness. While that awkwardness had not faded, he had gotten better at presenting a warmth to those he had promised to serve, although that warmth stayed behind a very professional line.

This man had Cas wanting to cross that line.

He was tall— taller than Cas, who was by no means short— and Cas could see the hint of a well defined chest through his t-shirt. His hair was some shade between blonde and brown that Cas couldn't point, the setting sun behind them shedding just enough light to turn the strands to molten gold. Freckles were splattered across his nose, and Cas wanted to find out where else they lead…

But it was mainly his eyes that did it: a bright, clear green that Cas had never seen before.

Hannah, apparently noting that her partner had been stunned into silence, cleared her throat. Cas closed his jaw (which he had just realized was open and wasn't that embarrassing?) and tried to gain back some semblance of dignity and snap himself out of it. As far as they knew, this man was married. Or had a girlfriend.

Or something.

"Hello," Cas said, trying to come across as somewhat unaffected by the man's presence. "We received reports of a domestic disturbance in the area and are checking it out."

"Excuse me?" the man asked, eyebrows rising to his hairline. His voice was deep with a slightly raspy quality and a hint of an accent, although Cas couldn't place it. Cas tried not to imagine what that voice would sound like doing other things.

"Where's your wife, sir?" Hannah demanded, clearly not as infatuated as Cas was.

The man looked confused. "I don't have a wife."

"Girlfriend, then," Cas corrected.

The man shook his head. "I don't have one of those, either."

"We had a report of a domestic," Hannah repeated. "Several neighbors reported hearing a woman screaming. Where is she?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the man responded, clearly starting to get frustrated with their line of questioning. "I live alone."

"People clearly heard you yelling and furniture being thrown around," Cas pointed out. He managed to sneak a look inside the house through the doorway. Furniture had clearly been moved around and upset in some sort of altercation. "You said were going to kill her and furniture getting thrown around the unit."

The man was beginning to look a bit red in the face, so Hannah decided to push him just a bit further. "Come on. What have you done to her?"

At this point, their suspect was flushing completely red, but not from anger as it usually was in cases like these. With amazement, Castiel noticed that he was _embarassed._

Muttering so quietly that they could barely hear, he said, "It was a spider."

"Sorry?" Hannah asked. Like Cas, she was clearly certain that they had misunderstood.

"It was a spider," the man repeated. Then, as if justifying himself, he added, "A really big one!"

Cas blinked. Once, then twice. "What about the woman screaming?"

"Yeah, sorry. That was me. I really, _really_ hate spiders."

"I see," Cas said, not really sure what to say. The man was clearly as uncomfortable as he was. Hannah looked about two seconds away from laughing at them both.

"Worst part is that it's still here," the man grumbled.

"Oh, he can take care of that," Hannah said, jerking her thumb in Cas's direction. Cas looked at her, surprised, and then looked to the man, who also seemed surprised at the change of subject. At his questioning look, Cas shrugged. Hannah was right, after all. He lived out in the country with his brother Gabriel, where spiders, even large ones, were a common occurrence. They didn't bother him.

The man stepped aside, ushering both of them into his house. As Cas had noted earlier, the place was a mess, with chairs overturned and a coffee tabled shoved hastily into one corner of the room. The television was in danger of falling off of its shelf.

And there, against one wall, Cas saw the root of the problem. It was a large spider, he had to admit, but hardly worth all the trouble. He asked the man if he had a cup he could man disappeared into another room (the kitchen, most likely), while Cas pulled out his notebook, tore a piece of paper from it, and returned it to its pocket. The man came back with the cup, which Cas took. He carefully approached the spider and gingerly used the piece of paper to nudge it into the cup. Once it was in, he walked quickly outside and tossed the spider into the bushes. Satisfied that the spider was taken care of, he headed back inside.

The entire thing had taken less than a minute.

The man looked quite sheepish now. "You made it look so easy."

"He keeps bees in his spare time," Hannah offered, as though Cas's affinities for _those_ insects explained his lack of reaction with _this_ one.

"Bees are very different than spiders," Cas said indignantly.

Hannah waved him away. "Spare me the lecture. I'm going to go let the neighbors know that everything is fine here. You grab his information, then meet me back at the car in five."

She turned and exited the house, leaving Cas alone with the ( _good looking_ ) man. He coughed to clear his thoughts and quickly pulled a pen and his beaten-up notebook out of his pocket, flipping to an empty page.

"I'm Dean, by the way," the man said as Castiel began jotting down the pertinent information in his notebook. He had been meaning to ask for the man's name— Dean had just saved him the trouble. "Dean Winchester."

"Cas," Castiel introduced, looking up and offering Dean a small smile.

"Cas," Dean repeated contemplatively. "What's that short for?"

"Castiel," Cas said reluctantly. His name had been a sore point for years— he'd been teased mercilessly at school until he'd learned to start introducing himself by his nickname. Even then, he had tried to consider himself lucky: Lucifer had definitely gotten the short end of the stick (maybe that was the reason why he acted out so much).

"I'll need your phone number," Cas announced as he finished writing down the details of the incident for his report later.

He looked at Dean in time to catch him smirking. "You asking personally or professionally?"

Cas stuttered, unsure of what to say, and the smirk on Dean's face immediately disappeared. "Sorry. Out of line? I didn't mean—"

"Professionally," Cas managed to gasp out. Dean's face crumpled just slightly and Cas felt it wrench at his heart. He wished he had Balthazar's skills when it came to flirting, but he didn't, so he did the best he could do: "But if you gave me your number for person reasons, I wouldn't complain."

His best was apparently good enough. Dean smirked once again and Cas couldn't help but smile in response.

 _Maybe this night was salvageable after all._


End file.
